by Sara Shepard
Claire looked at me out of the corner of her eye. My mind started to churn. It was odd that Claire wasn’t pushing to know why I’d left school. She knew I was too anal and rule-abiding to ditch, that something must have been really wrong. And yet she hadn’t asked.
The realization trickled in. I looked at her sharply, enraged. “Whatever you think you know isn’t true.”
Claire stepped back, startled.
“And anyway, you shouldn’t talk.” The words spilled out before I could harness them. “I know about that French guy and your mom.”
Claire’s mouth made a small o.
“I know about her affair,” I went on. “She ruined a perfectly good marriage.”
Claire slowly shook her head, then ran her hands through her hair. It took her a while to respond. “My mom didn’t have an affair with anyone,” she said, speaking into her chest. “It was my father. He had an affair with a girl. Like, a teenager. She was barely older than me. But my mother’s too proud to take his money, which is why we’re basically living in a crack house.”
A garbage truck circling Grand Army Plaza blew its horn. Another runner passed, making crisp footprints in the dusting of snow. I thought about how Mrs. Ryan had looked so crumpled and defeated at our house the other day. But I didn’t want Mrs. Ryan to be the victim. She couldn’t be. Mrs. Ryan and I are kind of in the same position, my father had told me last night, when I was starting on the Christmas cards.
“Why did he do that?” I managed.
“I don’t know.” Claire flicked her ashes. An ember landed on her coat and she brushed it off. “Who knows why anyone does anything? Do you know why your mom left?”
“My mom’s on a trip,” I said fast.
Claire scoffed. “Then why did she resign from her job?”
I stared at her.
“That’s why my mom initially came to see your dad. She called her old boss at Mandrake & Hester, to see if he could get her back her old job. And her boss goes, ‘Did you hear about Meredith Heller? She resigned. She didn’t even leave a forwarding number.’”
I took an elephantlike step back.
Claire lowered her shoulders, a look of realization passing over her face. “Your father didn’t tell you this?”
I concentrated hard on the yellow stitches running down the legs of Claire’s jeans. Such petite little V’s, for such a wide swath of fabric.
Claire let out a breath. Her face softened even more. It reminded me of the expression she had two years ago, when she’d come upon me on the bus and realized she’d walked right by without noticing I was there. “God, Summer. I’m so sorry. But we can talk about this together. About…the stuff that’s happening to both of us. We need each other.”
I thought of the second-to-last day before my mother left. I’d gotten up in the middle of the night and found her sitting in the living room, staring at the bare Christmas tree she and my father had picked out that morning. She had a nervous look on her face, almost like she was going to throw up. “Mom?” I said weakly.
She turned to me slowly and slumped. “What are you doing awake?”
I just couldn’t hold it in any longer. Tears started rolling down my face. It wasn’t hard to sense something was going on with her. Admitting it, however, was something else entirely.
“What’s happening?” I asked. “What’s wrong?”
My mother looked exasperated. “Go back to bed, Summer.”
“Can’t I help?” My voice was so squeaky, so pathetic. “Can’t you tell me?”
“Just go back to bed. Please.” She didn’t get up to touch me or guide me back or give me a hug. She just sat there, wringing her hands. Two days later she was gone.
It was all there, on the surface, waiting. But I stopped it before it could escape out of me. “She’s away on a trip,” I said to Claire. “She’ll be back.”
A long beat passed. The wind picked up, making the snow swirl. “Oh,” Claire said softly. “Okay.” She waited a few more moments, then turned and started walking into the center of the great lawn. Halfway across, she stopped and looked over her shoulder, pausing, maybe giving me another opportunity to say what she knew I needed to say. I stared at a fixed point on the ground, an ember from Claire’s cigarette.
When I finally lifted my head, Claire was all the way across the lawn, heading for the snow-dusted trees. The ache inside me was cruel and precise. I stood there for a while, my toes stiffening with cold. The church bell near Grand Army Plaza bonged out the hour. There was nothing to do but walk back. I creaked through the school gate and padded down the silent halls. The classrooms were full and preoccupied. I passed by my biology classroom; the new sub, the one that had taken over for Mr. Rice, was showing a filmstrip. After Mr. Rice was asked to leave, it came out that the principal had had his eye on him for a while—there had been reports that Mr. Rice had acted strangely in his other classes, too. The principal assured us none of what Mr. Rice taught us that last day—the invisible tethers of DNA, the certitude of science—was true. But I didn’t want to believe that. Wherever my mother was—walking on a sun-dappled beach, riding a streetcar in San Francisco, scampering down a rainy street in London—the tether around her was a literal one, a rip cord. Any minute now, it would stretch taut, and she’d snap back to us.
After school that day, I went home and stared at the buildings across the water for a while, thinking. Then I sat down at my father’s cluttered mahogany desk and wrote Mr. Rice a letter. I said I was sorry he had to leave our school, that I hoped he was all right. I wrote that I wanted to know a little more about those magical, unbreakable bonds of DNA he’d spoken about. How exactly did they hold family members together? I was looking for a little more scientific evidence to support this. If he could respond with articles, books, theories, I would be greatly appreciative.
At the bottom of the page, I signed the letter Yours in Genetics, Summer Davis. When my father came home from a rare day at the lab, he noticed the envelope with Mr. Rice’s name on it but no address. I’d told him a little about Mr. Rice—just his theory, not what I believed. Without asking any questions, as if my father sensed something big in me had changed, he picked up the envelope and sealed it with a stamp. He knew the woman in charge of substitute teachers at Peninsula, he said. If I wanted, we could mail the letter to her—she’d know Mr. Rice’s forwarding address.
It didn’t seem possible that my father could know such a person—he wasn’t involved with the school and hardly knew anyone outside of people he associated with at the lab. But I chose to believe this, too.
I watched as my father wrote out the woman’s address on the envelope. I watched his head disappear down our apartment building’s stairs, and I ran to the window and watched his head reappear on the street below. It was comforting to conjure up this image of him later, after he’d become so very different, so very damaged. I tried to remember him as he was right then, walking to that mailbox, protective and productive and strong.
That winter, I would stand in front of Two World Trade and look for you. I watched people go in and out of the revolving doors, thinking you’d be among them. When you weren’t, I went down to the underground mall and brushed through the shoe stores, the Gap, Duane Reade. I kept thinking I’d find you among the ribbed V-neck sweaters, the first-aid supplies.
They’ve asked me to pinpoint pivotal times where things began to really change for me, to reconstruct my life as best I can. I remember we were at a party at the Boathouse in Central Park—a friend of yours from your new job had graduated from business school. I had gotten up to go to the bathroom, and when I was on my way back, I saw you sitting at the table, laughing, drinking, eating cold shrimp with a dainty little fork. And I suddenly realized—it didn’t matter I was gone. Maybe it was better. So I started just to walk down the park drive. It was the middle of a Saturday afternoon in May, close to the anniversary.
I stopped when I got to the zoo. Outside the gates, there was a man selling balloons in the sh
apes of animals. A group of kids ran for the turnstiles, sneakers squeaking. They were so, so young. I sat down on a bench, listening to their high, happy voices, and all the things I vowed so long ago not to think about suddenly throbbed inside of me, way too present. The flashing blue lights. The way Mark looked at me when I told the EMT what I knew. All those years later, and I still felt every ounce of his shock.
And then, suddenly, there you were. You were standing above me, hands on hips.
What are you doing? you asked. I’ve been looking all over for you.
I went for a walk, I said.
Why? Your face was so red.
I gestured to the zoo’s cheerful gate. Remember when we took Summer and Steven here?
Yes. You said it very slowly, cautiously, as if I’d told a joke and you were waiting for the punch line.
Do you think all parents understand how great it is for kids to see animals? I asked. I’ve been sitting here, watching, and every kid who has gone in is so happy. All parents understand this, right? All kids get to go to zoos?
You turned your wedding ring around on your finger. I thought you were sick. I even had Paul go into the bathroom and make sure.
We went back to the party and explained that I’d run into an old friend and walked a ways up with him toward the reservoir. Your friends nodded and smiled and drank their drinks. The rest of the lunch, you had a hand on your bare knee, and you kept squeezing, squeezing. When you took it away once, I could see the fermata-shaped nail indentations in your skin.
After that, similar episodes came more frequently. I wasn’t where I said I would be. I wasn’t as dependable, wasn’t as cogent, couldn’t carry a conversation, missed days of work, spaced out for hours. Once, you caught me watching a Three Stooges marathon when I was supposed to be getting ready for a party. Another time you caught me on the Promenade, coaxing a baby squirrel toward my lap with a spoonful of peanut butter. I’d said I was going to the lab that day. Have you been tricking me? you asked. Have you always been this kind of person, but just hid it all this time?
It’s hard to explain, I said.
Try, you said.
But it was about the same things, the things I’d already told you. And it was about the things I could only halfway tell—I was so afraid to tell it all. But maybe I should have; maybe I owed it to you. And maybe that’s why I waited for you in front of your old office building, that winter after you left—so I could come clean. Or maybe I wouldn’t have said anything, if I would’ve seen you. Maybe it would’ve been enough to know that you were still here, near us, close.
This is probably the part where I should tell you how I really feel. That I think what you did was terrible, and that you ruined lives, and that I’ll never forgive you. But there’s room in me to forgive, I think. Maybe, in some ways, I saw it coming. Maybe, in some ways, I understand.
ii
twenty-one-gun salute
cobalt, june 1994
four
Do we have everything?” I asked.
My father and I were standing in the doorway of our apartment, bags slung over our shoulders, the wheels of the suitcase caught on the lip between the door and the hall. Steven had already gone down the street to look out for the car service.
We shut the door and locked all the locks. My father stooped, jiggling the handles to make sure they were truly secure. We heard the shouting on Montague Terrace before we pushed our way out of the heavy wooden brownstone door and clomped down the building’s front steps. The bags Steven had brought downstairs were waiting patiently at the curb next to an old diesel Mercedes, but Steven was standing in the middle of the street, his hands on his hips, glaring at Renee Klinefelter, our forty-something neighbor down the block. Renee was in her uniform, jeans cut off at the knees and a slightly-too-small black T-shirt that stretched tight over her paunchy stomach. As usual, her two grumpy-faced pugs flanked her, one on each side.
“Don’t pull that amnesty stuff on me,” Steven was shouting. “That bomb could have decimated one of our most vulnerable buildings. He should’ve been shot on the spot.”
“So what do you suggest we do?” Renee shouted back, spitting a little. “Deport everyone? Take away political asylum as a whole?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Some people need political asylum.”
“And some people who have it like to blow things up.” Steven was moving closer and closer to Renee’s face. “And do you realize you’re arguing for terrorism? You’re arguing for people with those ideals to…to infiltrate here and do this to us when we aren’t expecting it?”
He wheeled around, glaring pointedly at Iqbal, who owned the M&J Deli down the block. Iqbal had innocently walked into the street to make sure the misters were properly watering the fresh flowers he sold, but when he realized Steven was near, he inched back inside. Steven went off on Iqbal a month or so ago: People from your country do this. How does that make you feel? Iqbal dealt with it quietly, neither calling the cops nor barring Steven from the store—although maybe he should have. During Desert Storm, there were several yellow ribbons affixed to Iqbal’s register. He still slipped me loose candy he kept in the plastic bins above the register, barrel-shaped Tootsie Rolls and mini York Peppermint Patties, whenever I went in there to buy a Coke.
“If that van would’ve been a little closer to the concrete foundation in the basement, both buildings would’ve collapsed,” Steven yelled to Renee. “Do you even realize that?”
“Of course I realize that!” Renee shouted. “But it doesn’t mean we should persecute everyone!”
“You should do something,” I murmured to my father, who, as usual, had halted, paralyzed, on the curb. He cradled his right hand in his left, running his fingers over the scar on his right palm he’d gotten a few months ago from the broken snow globe. The deep cut had healed, but he often thoughtfully traced the scar over and over, maybe finding the motion soothing, maybe remembering what happened. I never wanted to ask. A curious, passive crowd had gathered to watch Steven and Renee. People were stepping out of their buildings, heads tilted toward the noise, and passersby had paused, leaning against railings, reining in their dogs, trying to understand what was transpiring.
I moved out to the street and pulled Steven’s arm. He wrenched it away without even looking at me. Renee leaned over like a bull ready to charge. My father, finally, pushed around me. “We have to go,” he said in Steven’s ear. “You’ve made your point.”
We both managed to pull Steven backward, returning to our pile of luggage at the curb. Luckily, the car service rolled up then, and I waved it over. We threw our suitcases in the trunk fast, piling them on top of empty water bottles, frayed straps to secure luggage, and a little box that looked either like a tool kit or a small suitcase for a gun. Steven craned his neck to get a look at the driver, a pale man with high cheekbones. When he greeted us, he had a Staten Island accent. Visibly relieved, Steven got in.
As we pulled away, Renee remained in the middle of the street, her stance solid and righteous. A man I didn’t recognize approached her, and Renee’s mouth started moving fast. It wasn’t hard to figure out what she was saying. Steven used to be such a nice boy, so quiet. And then all that happened, with the mother. What a pity.
Steven ran his hand over his hair, which he’d recently taken my father’s beard clippers to. It was so short, I could see his skull in spots, pinkish and bumpy. “She started it,” he muttered.
“It doesn’t matter who started it,” my father countered wearily.
The car took the exit for the Brooklyn Bridge. There were the mammoth Lower Manhattan buildings from a different angle than how we saw them from our apartment. Looming atop the Municipal Building was the giant Civic Fame statue, a bronze woman holding a shield, a bunch of leaves, and a crown. The World Trade towers jutted up like two prongs of an electrical cord. Out of habit, my eyes drifted to the North Tower—last February, terrorists drove the truck into its underground parking gara
ge and set off a bomb. Steven knew every detail of the incident: the bomb was made of urea pellets, bottled hydrogen, and various other things. It was supposed to go up the ventilation shafts and suffocate everyone working there. Officials found bomb-building plans in one of the terrorists’ suitcases when he entered the country, but he claimed political asylum so they couldn’t arrest him on the spot. Because of that loophole, 1,042 people had been injured and six people died. The New York Times listed the names of the dead, but not all those who had been hurt. Every day, when the paper came, Steven leafed through it, maybe checking, though he never explained.
Since then, whenever he wasn’t doing his NYU coursework, Steven read about airplane hijackings, bus attacks, and suicide bombings, most of which took place in far-flung countries like Lebanon, Sri Lanka, Israel. But Steven thought they could happen here, too. We could be walking down the street, he hypothesized, and boom. No more street. No more us. There was nothing we could do to control it.
Our car reached the highest point of the bridge. I eyeballed twenty-two flights from the top of the North Tower. The entire floor was dark.
My father jiggled his legs up and down as we descended off the bridge and turned onto the looping road to the FDR. “Are you all right?” I asked.
“I’m fine.”
“Are you sure you’re okay to drive?” We were headed for a car rental agency in the Village.
He shrugged.
“I could drive,” I volunteered.
“You don’t know how to drive,” Steven snapped.
“Neither do you.”
“I’ll drive,” my father interrupted. “I’m the one who knows how to get there.”
He looked longingly over his shoulder for a moment, back toward Brooklyn, pulling in his bottom lip until it vanished.
“It’s only three days,” I said in his ear. He nodded quietly, as if this were the vitamin he’d been looking for, as though these few, simple words had made everything better.
